Polished copy is easy now with AI. You can quickly write blog posts, social campaigns, video scripts, thought leadership essays, white papers, and podcasts at scale across every imaginable format and channel. And yet, after the content is published, it’s quickly forgotten.

What now separates authentic, smart content from forgettable (and sometimes regrettable) non-strategic content is taste.

When every piece of content imaginable is easy to make, deciding what not to make becomes the real work. The brands pulling ahead of everyone else are the ones making taste a core element of their content creation process.

Taste describes the ability to consistently distinguish what fits from what doesn’t. It’s an exercise in judgment about what deserves to exist in the first place. Taste is a skill that enables content teams to determine what’s worth an audience’s time from what merely fills a content calendar.

The Judgment Call

It used to be that content teams, measured by their ability to produce faster, more efficiently, at higher volume, had the advantage. But this edge has dulled as content has become a commodity. It’s simply not good enough to have “good enough” content.

Content that can be easily produced by tools and systems is competent and fluent by default. What’s often missing is judgment.

Judgement can’t be commoditized. Judgement is thinking. It’s like when a content team takes a dozen viable ideas and chooses only the three worth pursuing. When a person instinctively reframes a piece and trims it down so that what’s being communicated is genuine and advances the message, they’re making a judgment call.

Editors have always known what’s worth making and what’s best left out. The sharpest content teams are taking their cue from editors and gaining a competitive edge.

More Content Isn’t The Same as More Impact

Most organizations default to pursuing more content. More blog posts. More thought leadership. But publishing everything without taste doesn’t necessarily lead to better results.

Brands also risk diluting their message when they overload their audience with content. According to Accenture, 74% of empowered consumers walked away from purchases simply because they felt overwhelmed. Content overload works the same way. What readers want is clarity. If they get that from the content they read, they stay and reward brands with their trust. Bore or bombard them with content, and they often leave quietly.

The trap of producing more content is seductive because the metrics lag behind the damage. Publishing more can keep the pageviews and open rates looking fine for months, even as readers slowly lose interest. By the time the decline shows up in the numbers, the problem has been compounding for a long time—because nobody was asking whether any of it was worth making.

What “Taste” Actually Means

Taste sounds inherently subjective. You either have, or you don’t. But in practice, it’s far more concrete than its reputation suggests.

Content guardrails tell you what to do or not to do. For example, brand guidelines tell brands how to sound. Taste takes on a harder question: What’s actually worth making?

Creative taste involves a clear sense of what fits and what doesn’t. Organizations that have it know their own voice well enough that they don’t need to watch what other brands are doing (though your content is also competing for a spot in AI-generated answers).

Brands using taste to their advantage accept that not every audience segment will be served by every piece. They also know that there’s a payoff to being opinionated when it serves the strategy, because the safest content is often the least memorable.

Codifying Taste Without Killing Creativity

Taste can be scalable when shared, but avoid the temptation of turning “taste” into a checklist or formula. How can you define taste in a structured way so that creativity flourishes?

First: Show, don’t tell. Nothing communicates taste faster than showing people what good looks like and what it doesn’t. Collections of the brand’s best work, annotated with notes on why it works, give teams a reference point far more useful than abstract principles alone.

Second: Set clear principles. Principles can help lock in content teams to what taste is, as long as the principles are clear. An example, “We explain, we don’t lecture,” sets a standard while allowing for interpretation. Principles point content teams in a direction. But they also need freedom to experiment and adapt messaging without going off-brand.

The balance that works is shared standards plus human discretion. The system provides the framework. The people provide the judgment.

Editors Were Right All Along

As the volume of potential content grows, the need for experienced judgment grows with it. Senior editors and creative directors are filters. They’re the members of the team who look at a week’s worth of planned output and ask whether it actually says anything new.

Senior editorial leaders don’t just catch errors or enforce style guides; they decide whether content is worth sharing with the world. They set the standard for what makes sense while serving as a bridge between strategy and creative execution.

From a business standpoint, investing in strong editorial leadership helps manage risk. Any piece of content that falls short costs the company something, such as audience attention, brand reputation, or internal resources. Leaders who prevent mediocre work from being published help protect the value that’s hard to recover once it’s lost.

Taste Offers A Real Creative Advantage

The future of content belongs to teams who can say, with confidence, this is us, this isn’t, and this is worth your time.

Content creation will get easier as tools get better. Taste remains the throughline that keeps brands coherent, credible, and distinct.

The volume of content will keep increasing. But the organizations that treat editorial judgment as a strategic asset will be the ones whose content still matters five years from now.

Building that kind of editorial capability doesn’t happen by accident. It takes experienced leadership, shared systems, and a commitment to quality over quantity. Connect with Contently to work with expert managing editors who can help your team develop the taste and judgment that turns content from output into advantage.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs):

How do I build “taste” into my team if we don’t have a senior editor?

You may not have a senior editor yet, but you can still take key steps to establish “taste” guidelines for your team. First, gather five to ten pieces that your team thinks are their best work and note why each one succeeded. This will be your “taste” reference set. Next, create two or three clear editorial principles to guide decisions, but flexible enough to encourage creativity. Keep updating the reference set and refining the principles over time, revisiting them every quarter.

How do I convince leadership that publishing less content is the right move?

Leadership will likely want more. So offer a new perspective—too much content can weaken the brand and reduce trust. Also, producing too much can stretch resources thin, resulting in team burnout. Then connect the idea of less content to real results, such as the pipeline, engagement, or earned media generated in the last two quarters. Compare that data to the total output. Usually, a small portion of content drives most of the results. This data helps make your case.

How long does it take to see results after shifting from volume to judgment?

Plan for one full quarter. In month one, review past work and set standards. The team uses them on new projects in month two. By month three, expect results: better engagement, fewer revisions, and clearer priorities. This information will give your team a stronger understanding of what’s worth creating. Be sure to agree on this timeline with leadership before starting.

The post The Future of Content Belongs to the Tastemakers appeared first on Contently.

You have an internal marketing team, and you manage a team of freelancers—writers, designers, editors, etc. Email and Google Docs are your go-to forms of communication and collaboration. Unless your freelancers don’t have Gmail accounts, then the system breaks down. Freelancers can’t access your documents, so you have to email company assets. But those documents are constantly being updated, and you never remember which version you sent to which freelancer. So, you have to search through countless email threads to find the right one.

Now, instead of doing important work, you’re just retracing your steps to determine who knows what and what needs to happen next.

Alright, our journey is over, and you’re safe and sound now back in good old 2024. While this scenario was typical for marketing teams in 2010, many who haven’t discovered the wonder of content marketing platforms still experience these headaches. Perhaps you’re whispering to yourself: “Shoot, that’s me! What is a content marketing platform?” If so, that’s okay, we’ll bring you up to speed.

What are Content Marketing Platforms?

A content marketing platform (CMP) is an online software solution that allows businesses and marketers to collaborate across teams to strategize and streamline their content marketing processes.

I know what you’re thinking: That sounds a lot like a content management system (CMS). Sure, they both deal with content, but they serve different purposes in the overall content lifecycle. Here’s a quick breakdown of their differences:

Content Management Systems (CMS)

A CMS is a broader tool used to publish and distribute marketing content. It allows non-technical users to easily publish content across channels, edit webpages, and manage layouts (e.g., platforms like WordPress and Magento).

Content Marketing Platforms (CMP)

A CMP is a more specialized marketing tool designed for the entire content marketing process. This includes planning content strategy, creating content, scaling content production, analyzing performance, and distributing content across various channels.

Essentially, the biggest difference is that a CMS is primarily for publishing content to your website, while a CMP is for planning, strategic alignment, content creation, and optimizing content performance.

How do Content Marketing Platforms Work?

CMPs act as a central nervous system for your marketing efforts, helping your team streamline the content marketing process from strategy to results. Here are some of the specialized tools CMPs provide to improve your content marketing process:

Strategic insight: Develop a data-driven content strategy with features like keyword research tools and competitor analyses. Easily identify content gaps and potential audiences.

Organizational alignment: Store, update, and distribute your marketing strategy in one centralized location, effectively breaking down silos between internal and external teams, like freelancers and full-time employees.

Content calendars: Visually map out your content plan with dynamic, drag-and-drop calendar features. Keep your team aligned and organized with a unified calendar to schedule content creation, distribution, campaigns, and project deadlines.

Campaign management: Create and manage multi-channel campaigns within your CMP. Ensure all marketing activities (blog posts, social media posts, email blasts, etc.) align with overall strategy.

Workflow management: Assign tasks, track progress, and set clear deadlines for content creators, editors, and other team members.

Collaboration tools: Share documents, provide feedback, solicit feedback from company executives, streamline legal review, and communicate with your team using built-in messaging, text editors, and task management tools.

Our new dual-editing feature is a real-time collaboration tool that boosts the speed and ease of collaboration when several people are working on a document. Contently is the only CMP that enables real-time collaboration in-platform.

Content performance tracking: Analyze content performance across various channels using detailed analytics.

Team coordination: Keep your team aligned with notifications on project progress, campaign performance, and team activity.

Why Do I Need a Content Marketing Platform?

Every business and marketing team is different. So, is it fair to say they all need a CMP? Yes. Yes, it is. You just need to find a CMP with the right features for your team. So, let’s talk about the benefits of CMPs and what you should look for when shopping for a CMP:

Increased Bandwidth

Marketing teams are always spread thin. But what if you could double, triple, or even quadruple the size of your team? With a CMP, you have access to a powerful network of vetted writers, copy editors, designers, art directors, photographers, videographers, and much more. Suddenly, your marketing team is able to focus on strategy while producing more content.

Without a CMP, marketing teams are forced to pause content creation and publishing while they focus on strategy. But CMPs allow teams to maintain their momentum and continue operations while finalizing their marketing approach.

What to Look For:

Not all CMPs offer a talent network. While some CMPs integrate with freelance marketplaces or offer features to collaborate with external contributors, a built-in talent network of freelancers is not a standard feature.

But the best enterprise content marketing platforms will provide trusted freelancers within their platform. For example, Contently has vetted and trained each of their 160,000+ freelancers in their talent network.

Gain Strategic Alignment

Every good campaign starts with a good strategy. With a CMP, you can document your strategy upfront, create alignment within your team, and provide visibility to your in-house team and freelancers. With custom analytics, you can track each of your audiences, determine how your content is performing, and measure your progress against key performance indicators (KPIs).

What to Look For:

Look for a user-friendly platform that allows each of your team members to customize their dashboards. Whether it’s your CMO or marketing manager using the platform, they can create a dashboard that shows the information and metrics most important to them.

You also want a platform that allows users to provide story briefs or specific instructions to individual freelancers and internal team members. Share insights into audience personas, voice, and strategy without having to attach a 70-page brand book to every assignment. Contently also allows users to templatize their story briefs, so they don’t have to start from scratch with each project.

For your freelancers, use a CMP with a quick link to content strategy, so they can quickly reference goals, audience, and tone with a click of a button.

Scale Content Creation

CMPs can function like growth serums for marketing teams by eliminating repetitive tasks, like scheduling social media posts or resizing images for different platforms. Content templates and pre-designed workflows allow teams to quickly create content consistent with brand guidelines and established processes.

With detailed analytics, teams can see which content resonates with audiences and quickly make improvements. This data-driven approach accelerates the optimization process and helps teams focus on high-performing formats and topics.

What to Look For:

To improve your optimizations and increase ROI, make sure your CMP allows you to test different monetization channels, perform A/B tests, and personalize your content and marketing campaigns using customer data.

For marketers looking for a way to justify their content spend, Contently offers the Content Value Tracker. It actually calculates how much your organic traffic is worth in dollars.

Achieve Brand Compliance

Streamline brand compliance and ensure consistency by incorporating legal and brand requirements into your project briefs, templates, and workflows. Even with strict brand guidelines, you can use brand management tools to flag blocklisted words and phrases and apply a uniform style and tone to each piece of content.

What to Look For:

The best content marketing platforms will include automated quality control features. These tools can scan for plagiarism, assess content for reading level, correct grammar, and optimize for SEO. The best CMPs will also provide AI-generated recommendations on writing quality, such as misused words and double verbs.

Contently’s workflow tools also ensure each team member knows what is required of them and when their tasks are due. Once a freelancer completes a task or meets the project requirements, they are paid automatically through Contently.

Ask The Content Strategist: FAQs About Content Marketing Platforms

How do content marketing platforms facilitate communication between external freelancer and internal teams?

Content marketing platforms often provide features like built-in messaging, task management tools, and collaborative document sharing to facilitate communication between internal teams and external freelancers, ensuring seamless integration regardless of the tools they use.

Can content marketing platforms assist in identifying and filling content gaps in a marketing strategy?

Yes, content marketing platforms typically offer features such as keyword research tools and competitor analyses, allowing users to identify content gaps and potential audiences, thereby aiding in refining and filling gaps within the marketing strategy.

Do content marketing platforms offer functionalities for brand compliance and legal requirements within content creation?

Many content marketing platforms integrate legal and brand compliance requirements into project briefs, templates, and workflows, while also offering automated quality control features such as plagiarism detection and grammar correction.

If you’re ready to make your work life immeasurably better and add a CMP to your content marketing process, start your search here.

The post What Are Content Marketing Platforms and Why You Need One appeared first on Contently.

Finding the Right Freelancer for Your Needs

As AI-generated content creates more noise in the marketplace, quality writers are crucial for scaling content strategically. It can be difficult to find the right fit, whether you have a niche subject matter that requires an experienced expert to write about it thoughtfully or you’re in a regulated industry that requires knowledge of compliance.

You need writers who understand your brand, your voice, and your industry. Those qualifications may seem rudimentary, but I know you know how difficult that triple threat can be to find. Content marketers never have enough time in the day, which means you don’t have the bandwidth to train a newbie on the cornerstones of your industry.

You also need talented writers with proven experience in the niche that you can trust to give you a great draft the first time. You don’t want to waste the precious time you do have training a writer on how to put together a grammatically correct sentence, either.

Contently’s Managing Editors

At Contently, our freelancers are pre-vetted and trained before they’re ever assigned to a client account. Our Managing Editors act as an extension of your team, enabling you to train one person on your brand tone, voice, and guidelines and then hand over the reins when it comes to sourcing, training, and editing the freelancers for hire.

With this valuable teammate in place, you can scale content creation rapidly. Managing Editors meet with their clients at their convenience for routine one-on-one meetings. In these sessions, clients discuss their content ideas, ask for help with ideation, and share feedback on recent content submissions.

Managing Editors keep track of your content calendar, advising where there are potential gaps that a new piece could fill. Whether you’re strategizing for better thought leadership on your blog or need a more strategic approach to the whole funnel, our Managing Editors can help you create a content calendar that meets those needs.

Contently’s Freelancers for Hire

With over 160,000 freelance profiles currently listed on Contently’s creative marketplace, we offer a broad array of talent for every industry. You’re not just tapping into a global network of creatives—you’re investing in a smarter way to scale your content program.

We don’t just offer access to talented writers, either. Our network is comprised of talented creatives in a variety of disciplines—including editorial, graphic design, illustration, photography, videography, and more. Just imagine what you could produce with these creative professionals at your fingertips.

We can also connect you to talent in various industries, from healthcare and financial services to hospitality and manufacturing. Got a specific niche in your field? Our internal creative marketplace team can help you find the talent you need for your specific project. Just submit a talent search request, and we’ll follow up with our top recommendations.

Measuring Freelancer ROI

In content marketing, measuring return on investment is never easy. What kind of engagement on your content leads a person to act? How many pieces of content does it take to reach a conversion? What CTAs led your reader to schedule a demo or add to cart?

There is no right answer because human behavior can only be measured in averages. While you could analyze the trends and see what gets a majority of people to convert on a specific CTA, there is no formula for the perfect media mix that gets every viewer to convert.

While Contently offers a variety of ways to prove your content’s value, it’s also a great tool for assessing the effectiveness of your freelancers. In the Contributor section of Contently Analytics, you can view specific time periods to see which writers are making the most impact on your audience.

You’ll be able to see the total people viewing content attributed to the freelancer, percentage of those people engaged, average time spent on their assets, average finish rate, and total attention time. These metrics can also be broken down by story when you open the carrot by their name to reveal individual metrics by article.

Above, you’ll see one of The Content Strategist’s key contributors, Laura Starita, and her contributions to TCS in Q2 2023. While those individuals preceding her have more total viewers, we must also consider the percentage of people engaged, average time spent, and finish rate. Those who precede here are founders, board members, or Contently alumni, and they all published their articles years before Laura started contributing to TCS. This alone shows us that she’s doing exceptionally well for the time she’s been measured.

If you need to see how one contributor compares to the rest, you can easily generate a CSV report to download and take to your team. When you click the Generate Report button on the top right corner, Contently gathers the data and emails you a CSV file.

This CSV file is attached to the email, which you can download in Excel or convert to Google Sheets. Below, you’ll see that I chose the latter. The contributor analytics pulled from Contently showcase the date range I pulled, Contently’s Q2, and the metrics for each author, including total people, engagement rate, average attention time, average finish, and total attention time.

A Content Marketing Platform With Freelancers for Hire

Contently is the ultimate content marketing platform (CMP) for marketers seeking to scale their programs with ease. With the increasing demands of the business, it’s difficult for content marketers to keep up. We need freelance support that can deliver quality results quickly. Contently can help you achieve those goals.

Ready to realize your content’s potential? Get a personalized demo today to see how you can measure even more return on your content’s investment.

The post Level Up Your Content: Unleash the Power of Freelancers for Hire appeared first on Contently.

Our brains are craving escape from the doldrums of isolation and quarantine. If the pandemics of the past are any indication, we’re about to witness a decade of flourishing creativity—a content revolution that changes our culture.

There are signs it’s already begun.

If one media trend dominated 2020, it was the emergence of “The Creator Economy.” The term describes individual creators—writers, filmmakers, TikTok stars, etc.—who build self-sustaining businesses without media companies.

We’ve seen a slew of prominent writers from Matthew Yglesias to Ashley Feinberg go out on their own on Substack, for instance, and easily monetize their following. I believe the forces behind The Creator Economy will also drive the broader content revolution over the next decade.

In the mid-1990s, only a tiny fraction of the world were content creators; today, damn near everyone creates content in some way—from Janet Yellen to your flat-earther cousin—and over 50 million people formally identify as a “creator.”

But over the past year especially, two technological forces have made it much easier for creators to build independent businesses: monetization platforms and no-code tools.

Ad revenue is a fickle beast. Subscriptions are much more reliable. Today, platforms like Substack, Patreon, and Revue (recently acquired by Twitter) make it simple for people to subscribe directly to people’s work. Meanwhile Teachable, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and others allow creators to spin up paid courses, and platforms like Contently, where I work, make it easy to pick up high-paying branded content gigs if necessary.

As online learning expert Brandon Jordan told me recently: “We’ve entered a golden age of educational content. Creative educators are about to dominate the world.”

It’s also much easier to break away from a media company and go it on your own if you don’t have to rely on a big team of designers, video editors, and web developers to help develop your content.

That’s where no-code tools come in. Squarespace makes it easy to build a beautiful website; Adalo lets non-coders build apps. Canva allows non-designers to produce high-quality visuals. Descript, mmhmm, and TikTok are making video editing faster and easier than ever. Individual creators can be competent across mediums without spending hundreds of hours learning Photoshop and FinalCut Pro.

These tools are changing the way we think about creative work. Which leads me to the question I’m contractually obligated to answer in this newsletter…

What will the content revolution mean for brands?

It’s easy to see parallels between the creative revolution happening right now and those that happened during past pandemics—from Shakespeare’s creative breakthroughs during the Black Plague to the Jazz musicians and modernist writers of the 1920s.

Pandemics force people to think about art and storytelling in new ways. As things return to normal, there’s a wave of momentum for those creators, both from the post-pandemic economic boom, and also from the strong desire to engage in communal experiences.

As the content landscape shifts, media companies and brands alike will need to adapt.

Many marketers will look at the creator economy and see 50 million new advertising vessels. Influencer marketing! Spon-con! But that’s just repeating the same old advertising playbook—a passive approach unlikely to yield big results.

Smart marketers will look at the shifts and figure out how to build a bigger, better audience of their own. Here’s how.

1. Embracing internal influencers

Last summer, Medium and Twitter co-founder Ev Williams wrote that we’re now in a “relational media” era. There’s a lot to unpack in his piece, but one of the core ideas is that credibility and affinity mostly come from individuals—writers, podcast hosts, etc.—rather than traditional media brands. We care more about the byline more than the masthead.

The good news is that affinity can transfer from the person to the brand. People trust Contently and come to us for content marketing advice because they read and watch smart things made by me, Jordan Teicher, Deanna Cioppa, Kristen Poli, and other people who work here. We’re more likely to trust a brand when we associate it with real people—particularly in B2B tech.

We care more about the byline than the masthead.

Many marketers I talk to are afraid to embrace internal influencers. What if the person leaves? This is silly. First, these influencers are more likely to stay if you give them a valuable platform. Second, if someone leaves, it just presents an opportunity to elevate someone else.

2. Double down on creative talent—even if you can’t hire them full-time

Those influencers can only build trust if they’re pretty damn good at creating thoughtful content.

The truth: Some marketers just aren’t that good at creating content. It’s not what they studied. It’s not how they paid the rent in their 20s. That’s okay! There are thousands of talented journalists and media refugees looking for work.

Your internal influencers don’t necessarily need to be full-time employees either. They can also be freelancers who write regularly for your brand. Over the years, we’ve had a bunch of Contently freelancers who wrote consistent bylines for our blog and earned trust with our audience. We’ve seen them do the same for our clients as well. And often, a great freelance writer is just as likely stay with your brand for a decade than the average employee—if not more so.

3. Know your audience inside and out

One of the advantages of Substack is that writers can focus on a smaller, dedicated following that loves their work, instead of the broader audience of a media company. Those people are willing to pay for that work because the writer knows exactly what interest them.

If brands want to compete, they need to know their audience really well. Too many content strategies start with “What do we want to say?” instead of “What does our audience want from us?”

And as a marketing leader, you need to drive that mindset. You also need to …

4. Give your creative team freedom

The great news about all of the tools at our disposal is that we can create content faster than ever. Give your team the freedom to come up with ideas and execute on them without always asking for permission. Have a strategy and guidelines, but don’t over-engineer things. Your best ideas don’t have to come from a grueling five-hour brainstorming session.

For example, Jordan, our director of content, made this Venn diagram in about 3 minutes on Canva. It was our best performing LinkedIn post of the month.

5. Leverage both creator economy tools and enterprise content creation tools

It becomes a lot easier to give your team that creative freedom when you have visibility into what’s going on. For example, Contently’s platform makes it easy for me to have oversight because I can instantly see everything my team is doing across publications and campaigns.

Most brands need a content creation stack that has two types of tools. First, an enterprise content marketing platform where they can track everything and streamline the compliance process. And second, inexpensive yet powerful creation tools that their content teams can use to create incredible content on the fly.

The past year has brought so much pain and struggle, but as the light emerges on the other side, let the possibilities ahead give you life. There’s never been a better time to create. Let’s get at it.

The post The Content Revolution Is Here. Is Your Brand Ready? appeared first on Contently.

With bigger content investments, however, comes increased competition for attention. Brands are not only competing with their competitors for consumer attention, but also every individual content creator and media company on earth. Each year, that competition is only increasing.

To make sense of the changing landscape and how brands can better serve their audiences, we set out to hear directly from consumers. What do they want from content marketing? How do they spend their time online? And what else can brands do to positively influence their purchasing decisions?

Here’s what they had to say.

[If you’d like to read the PDF version, we have you covered here.]

Methodology & Key Findings

At the start of January, we surveyed 1,072 Americans to find out their content marketing preferences. The sample size was proportioned based on U.S. Census data for attributes including: age, gender, region, and income.

Results & Analysis

Branded content has broken through to the masses

In marketing, recognition always matters. Creating great content costs time and money, but with ad blockers so popular and media habits constantly evolving, there’s no guarantee people will pay attention to your work.

For that reason, it’s encouraging that 80 percent of respondents read, watched, or listened to a piece of content from a brand in the last year.

When content marketing emerged last decade, some people viewed it as a side project that wasn’t incorporated into their larger marketing strategies. And when companies did invest in it, they weren’t always sure how to package their content, which led to trust issues. In 2016, Contently partnered with the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at The City University of New York on a study that revealed 44 percent of people were not able to identify the brand behind a piece of sponsored content.

“In marketing, recognition always matters.”

Steadily, though, those problems dissolved as brands felt more comfortable publishing meaningful content (more on this later) and thinking like media companies. There was no reason to hide logos or sponsorships. Now, brands are eager to put their work out there and reach a wide audience. It’s official: Branded content has gone mainstream.

People trust brands more than media companies (and it’s not even close)

A clear majority of U.S. adults (63 percent) now trust brands more than traditional media outlets. In isolation, this is good news for marketers. But it also may be bad news for the civic health of the country.

This data point is complicated. The news industry has withstood an unprecedented attack on its integrity over the past five years, as the Trump administration turned “fake news” into a rallying cry. Numerous studies—like this one from Edelman—have discovered that trust in news media continues to sour.

While consumers increasingly question the motivations behind the news media, the motivations of brands are more transparent: They want to sell you something, even when they’re creating helpful content. Brands that are transparent about their motivations will likely earn more trust as long as their content adds value to someone’s life.

As for the distrust of the news media? That’s a whole other problem that warrants more research.

Most people follow a brand on social media

Social media is a test lab for creativity. It’s a lot easier to send a tweet than hire people to write, edit, and illustrate a blog post. Social networks also offer more freedom than corporate websites. Plenty of branded accounts have found a voice there, and it appears to be working. In our survey, 69 percent of respondents claimed to follow a brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Instagram. Nice, right?

We’ve heard firsthand from the people behind successful social accounts for brands ranging from Steak-umm to Merriam-Webster about how they build community rather than plug product pages. There’s no universal blueprint, but the best brands seem to embrace a straightforward, colloquial style. They’re quirky, clever, and quick to join conversations native to the platform.

Many of the brands with big followings and impressive engagement skew B2C. No matter how hard we all try, there can only be one Denny’s. But B2B companies with smaller audiences can still use their platforms to post useful advice, answer pressing questions, and show off a personality. HubSpot does a great job of this on Twitter, mixing in polls, discussion questions, and tips for its 815,000 followers.

Influencers are more like ______

— HubSpot (@HubSpot) November 18, 2020

Only a small portion of HubSpot’s tweets consist of links to their content, but this pays off in the long run. Followers know you’re not just posting for traffic, and they’ll appreciate the interactivity, which was the original point of social media. Then, when you are looking to drive people to your content, they’ll be eager to click on a link and head to your site.

Social impact storytelling drives purchase intent

Contently head of marketing Joe Lazauskas recently crowned social impact storytelling “the hottest content trend” of 2021, and for good reason. We found that 65 percent of people prefer to buy from brands that align with their values.

There’s an additional wrinkle here that underscores the big role content can play. When we asked if people are more likely to buy from a brand after reading a story about the positive impact it’s having on the world, the likelihood they’d make a purchase increased by 9 percentage points.

This suggests content about corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives can have a real impact on purchasing decisions. Covering these efforts is more than just a humble brag. It separates legitimate action from the empty words and gestures that some companies use to score a few PR points.

Patagonia is arguably the best example of a company that has mastered social impact storytelling. In addition to donating 1 percent of all revenue to sustainable causes, Patagonia has also developed longform stories on activism and a series of beautiful documentary shorts about environmentalism. A number of other brands ranging from TOMS to Bank of America have followed suit. And in the last year, the pandemic seemed to galvanize a lot of companies into reporting on their COVID-19 relief efforts.

As Lazauskas explained in his newsletter: “One of the coolest things is that telling these stories will not only help your company’s bottom line—it’ll help the world too. That’s because when you tell great stories about the good your company is doing, it creates a positive feedback loop that encourages your company to invest more in CSR and social impact efforts.”

Most consumers subscribe to multiple brand newsletters, but the competition is heating up

Email hasn’t changed all that much over the past two decades. Yet year after year, marketers consistently vote it as one of their top distribution channels. In fact, marketers rated email newsletters as the best way to nurture leads, ahead of blog posts, in-person events, and case studies, per Content Marketing Institute’s 2020 B2B Benchmarking Report.

We’re not here to rain on the parade. Email is also one of Contently’s biggest content distribution channels. However, too much of a good thing can lead to negative consequences. Because while it’s very easy to send an email, getting someone to care about it is a different story.

“While it’s very easy to send an email, getting someone to care about it is a different story.”

According to our research, 69 percent of respondents are subscribed to multiple brand newsletters. About 21 percent aren’t subscribed to any.

Given that the average worker receives about 120 emails per day, it’s promising to see a healthy appetite for branded content delivered to their inbox. But with so much competition and clutter, it may be harder for newsletters to gain traction—especially since a 2020 Litmus report found that 54 percent of marketers expected to send more emails than the year before.

To stand out via email, marketers can no longer rely on the same old digest of recycled links. As we wrote recently in our newsletter guide, marketers must ensure their newsletter provides unique information and perspective their audience can’t get anywhere else. They should also consider publishing content that’s exclusive to newsletter subscribers, and personalize and segment email content based on audience data. (We use MailChimp and Pardot to do this.)

Lastly, focus on promoting your newsletter. It won’t grow if nobody can find it. Use prime real estate on your site to set up “Subscribe” fields, and reach out to relevant companies to see if there’s mutual interest in guest posts that could increase your reach.

Consumers crave educational courses

The point of content marketing is to help the buyer. Good content should either entertain you or make you better at your job. Great content should do both.

Educational courses are one practical way to pull this off. We’ve been bullish on this trend for a while, and according to our survey, audiences feel similarly: 58 percent of people said they were somewhat or very likely to take a free course from a brand.

Courses are effective because they get marketers to produce series rather than one-off pieces of content. (It’s called the buyer’s journey for a reason.) People don’t make a purchase after reading one blog post. The average B2B executive buyer consumes 17 pieces of content over the course of the sales cycle, according to Sirius Decisions. So marketers can show off their unique expertise with a course. Plus, it makes more sense for someone to fill out a lead form if they’re expecting to receive a new lesson every week from your company.

“Good content should either entertain you or make you better at your job. Great content should do both.”

To see this in action, we recommend checking out HubSpot Academy and Grow With Google. Both educational hubs chunk out courses into short video lessons that are easy to digest. If you’re looking for more insight before you get started, we put together some quick tips and research insights that should help.

Invest in influencer marketing at your own risk

Trust has been a common theme running through this report. It’s arguably most important when it comes to influencer marketing because influencers blur that line between selling and helping. They’re not always held to the same labelling and disclosure standards as brands.

That blurred line may be catching up with influencers. Only 26 percent of respondents trust influencers when they promote a product or service from a brand.

While paid influencers may come across as misleading or transactional, social proof remains an incredibly powerful force in marketing. People value expertise and third-party validation, as long as it comes from the right source. To dig deeper, we asked people to rank five groups based on trustworthiness:

Marketers can’t really tap into friends and family, but to replicate a similar kind of trusted expertise, they do have another option: thought leadership. Last year, Edelman found that 89 percent of people believe thought leadership has enhanced their perceptions of a company, and 49 percent claimed it influenced purchasing decisions.

Savvy thought leadership content, which is more popular in B2B marketing than B2C, tends to have better optics than influencer marketing. And it may be your best bet to solve those trust issues for good.

Strive for a balance of content formats to maximize your reach

In 2015, three words began messing up digital media: pivot to video. Some companies decided to go all in on video because they thought it would please social media algorithms. Others soon followed suit, hoping their content engagement would immediately skyrocket.

As a result, entire editorial teams were let go. We now know that the pivot was hugely problematic. Facebook, in particular, provided inflated video metrics to publishers and advertisers, misleading them into investing more resources into Facebook video. Social platforms inflated video metrics so that companies would pay more to promote their content. Five years out, this serves as a strong reminder that there’s no perfect content format.

Our study backs this up. When we asked people to select the type of content they enjoy the most, results were split. Video led the pack at 30 percent, but visual content (like graphics and memes) and text were close behind, with 28 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Notably, when we filtered the data just for people aged 30-44, text edged out video as most enjoyable.

Therefore, unless you have a very narrow audience, it makes sense to invest in a balanced content output. It also makes sense to conduct research on your audience by interviewing them or using software that captures their preferences. (At Contently, we rely on an internal tool called StoryBook for this.) Find out details like which topics, channels, visuals, and headlines will resonate with them so you can make the most of your content budget.

Plus, content rarely lives in a vacuum. Good stories often incorporate multiple content formats on the same page. On The Content Strategist, for example, we try to break up long blocks of text with video embeds and custom graphics.

This approach helps hold the audience’s attention because we all retain information differently. There are four common learning styles: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and reading/writing. Younger people tend to favor visual learning, but research shows that preferred learning styles change as we get older, leaning more toward reading and writing. With this in mind, marketers should aim to accommodate as many potential buyers as possible.

Conclusion

How can brands continue to improve their content programs and drive results? The main takeaway from our report is to focus on trust. The companies that stand out find unique ways to add value to people’s lives. They connect with a distinct voice and emphasize helpful guidance over promotional tactics.

In 2021, as more money pours into content marketing, we expect there to be increased competition for attention. However, as our report lays out, there is a clear blueprint for creating great content and reaching the right audience.

We hope this data helps guide your future plans. Buyers aren’t shy about what they want. Now it’s up to today’s content marketers to give it to them.

The post 2021 Contently Report: What Buyers Want From Content Marketing appeared first on Contently.

Let’s say you had your first big hit last year—an epic drama about star-crossed lovers in Spain. You worked hard with an amazing crew and brilliant actors, and now you’re famous. Congratulations!

Now, in the wake of your hit, Disney says they want you to direct the new Marvel movie: Spiderman 7. Double congratulations! But now, I have question for you: Are you going to use the same team for this movie as your last one?

Probably not!

Sure, you’ll tap your most trusted crew members—cinematographer, editor, etc.—but you’re also going to need different resources to bring Spidey to life. You’ll want a big computer graphics department, different location and set design pros, and more. And you’ll probably hire a bunch of different actors for this movie than the last one.

This is The Hollywood Model.

Illustration by Andrew Rae | New York Times Magazine

In the movie business, each project presents a unique challenge. Meeting that challenge means assembling a team that combines proven coworkers with new talent. I bring this up because I believe that the future of content production is going to look more and more like this model.

Whether you’re a publisher, marketer, or even a blogger, your “team” is going to use the Hollywood Model in the future. It’ll give you the greatest chance to tell stories that resonate with your audience.

As someone who’s coordinated a lot of content campaigns—and led numerous teams throughout my business career—I’ve spent significant time thinking about teamwork. I’ve been fascinated by the question of what makes certain groups of people add up to more than the sum of their parts. I ended up writing a book about this, and what I learned in the process helped explain what I’d been seeing across media and marketing.

The best creators don’t do the same thing over and over again. They continuously tap into different types of talent so they can push the boundaries of their field.

In other words, they aren’t afraid to think like Hollywood.

The Hollywood Model treats every problem as discrete. A new film means a custom cast, locations, and collaborators. Anyone who’s spent time on a film set studying will see something pretty astounding: Professionals with real expertise in their crafts can come together and make something amazing happen with very limited oversight. Lights, grips, sound, makeup, wardrobe—all of these work under the direction of leadership, but they don’t need to be told every little thing to do. They come together and make things happen.

The best creators don’t do the same thing over and over again.

In this setting, the director’s job is to set the vision and share as much information as possible with the team. Good directors empowers people. They don’t micro-manage the grips. They doesn’t hoard information so they can be the hero.

And when it comes time to cast a film, the director doesn’t just hire 20 actors with the best GPAs from Harvard or the same from the last film. A new film means new ground to break, a new story to tell, and a fitting group of people to make it happen. The best casts are chosen carefully for their ability to portray the story and to bring out the most in each other.

When production ends, the crew go their separate ways to other projects—until a new project unites some of them again. Steven Spielberg famously brings much of his crew back together for new movies, having found people he trusts to help execute his vision. But he also brings in new writers, actors, and technical specialists who breathe new ideas into his work.

I’m convinced that creative people of the future will think of themselves like directors. Their job isn’t to do everything, to know everything. Their job will be to assemble the right teams to tell the best stories. Over and over again.

The post Why the “Hollywood Model” Is the Future of Content Creation appeared first on Contently.

My professor explained it this way: Imagine if everything you ever wrote, from a sales pitch to a marketing newsletter to a novel chapter, had to be read by an audience of persnickety experts in your field. Readers who habitually enjoy romance paperbacks don’t have patience for a milquetoast protagonist or an overdone setting on a pirate ship.

The romance genre, as several novelists told me, can be broken down into hundreds of sub-genres, each with their own outspoken, passionate fans. Whether you’re writing romance through speculative sci-fi, historical, high fantasy, or the often-maligned paranormal (most people think Twilight first), the writer constantly battles to keep the audience engaged. If not, readers can easily set your work aside and pick up one of the thousands of options created by your competitors.

If you’re in the business of content, an oversaturated market for attention might sound familiar. Romance readers tend to tear through one book per week, and Harlequin Books alone publishes 120 new romance novels per month. So how do romance writers succeed?

Defy audience expectations right away

Maria Vale, author of the romance series The Legend of All Wolves, began her first book by immediately pushing against tropes. Cognizant of joining the crowded canon of paranormal romance, Vale said, “I wanted the reader to say, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen this before.'” Since she wanted to tell a story about werewolves, she began with an alpha female, rather than a domineering male character.

In fact, Vale said powerful women in romance have become increasingly popular in recent years. “Nothing bothers a modern romance writer more than that phrase ‘bodice ripper,'” Vale said. “People make Fabio jokes too. First of all, bodice ripping is a romance trope from the 1970s, and Fabio was from the ’80s, so both points are outdated. Second, romance readers have been talking about consent for a long, long time.”

“So what’s an author to do? We have to make readers care.”

In another corner, Stacey Keith, author of Kensington Books’ Dreams Come True series, said she rejected the pattern of giving a heroine a gaggle of lesser female sidekicks. “You know the ones—they’re besties with the heroine, but for various reasons they aren’t ‘contenders’ in the romantic field,” she explained. “They’re never as attractive as the heroine, and I think that’s a mistake. It’s important to show women being friends, supporting each other, without cattiness or simmering rivalries (unless they’re part of the plot).”

If any other professional can identify with industry tropes worth ignoring, it would be the marketer. The field is full of annoying jargon, stale stock photos, and generic blog posts that never seem to go anywhere. Just taking time to think about what you can to do to stand out before you start your next piece of content or campaign will put you ahead of the masses.

Respect the formula (to a degree)

Of course, no matter how inventive romance authors want to be, they would never toss out the entire genre. Adriana Anders, author of the best-selling Blank Canvas series, enjoys sprinkling some tried-and-true methods throughout her romance novels. “I have favorite tropes—forced proximity high amongst them, followed closely by enemies-to-lovers,” she explained. It behooves a creator, then, to find balance between cliches and old favorites. After all, first kisses happen in the rain for a reason.

Keith, meanwhile, toys with antiquated tropes by making modern edits. “There’s been a lot of buzz lately around the issue of virginal heroines,” she says. “As a writer and as a feminist, I certainly agree that no woman should be defined by her sexual status. Yet I do have a virginal heroine in Dream Lover […] because the character herself rebels against the whole good girl/bad girl stereotype.”

You might be wondering, “What do romance heroines have to do with my content strategy?” That’s a fair question. Consider, though, how Keith assessed industry buzz, internalized the conversation happening between writers and readers, and ultimately made a bold choice in her content. By choosing an old style that has recently been questioned and examined by her contemporaries, Keith understood how to offer her audience enough of what it expected.

That’s an easy lesson for content creators of all stripes. Try to find your place somewhere between following proven tactics and making a big splash. If you only produce long how-to blog posts, you’ll burn out your audience and run out of things to say. At the same time, publishing a ton of short aggregated articles with news that someone else broke will leave you with an output that’s digestible but forgettable. Formulas exist as a guide, but you can’t abandon them entirely or adhere to them religiously if you want to stand out.

Don’t try to reach everyone

Each of the romance novelists I talked to stressed how knowing the audience added value to their artistic process and overall productivity. These women are aware, of course, of the people from my college workshop who roll their eyes at prolific romance writers who can churn out a novel a year. They understand that no matter what they do, some readers and writers won’t care.

It’s not always easy to accept that realization, but when you stop trying to reach everyone, it’s easier to build loyalty with an audience. For brands, in particular, there will always be naysayers who believe content marketing inherently lacks depth or quality—just because it’s marketing. However, there are still plenty of people who can appreciate your work if you commit to educating and entertaining them.

“No one wants to be ‘sold to’ anymore,” Vale said. “No one wants to have your book rudely thrust in their face. So what’s an author to do? We have to make readers care.”

All of this is to say: Develop a plan. Have a strategy. Document it, if you can. Like a romance novelist, you should feel supported by all the data that’s behind you when you sit down to write. In fact, developing a content strategy is about as obvious a choice as a heroine picking between the wealthy-but-mean guy and the penniless-but-funny guy. You always pick the funny guy—everyone knows that.

The post What Romance Novelists Can Teach Us About Pleasing a Tough Audience appeared first on Contently.

When you walk into Contently’s HQ, the first thing you see is a wall painted with the words: “Those who tell stories rule the world.” In addition to serving as permanent quirky fixture of our interior design, it’s become the defining message of who we are and what we offer.

As marketers get to know us better, they want to know how we help brands create content that has a meaningful business impact. Part of getting to that business impact involves fine-tuning the editorial process.

For brands, creating content involves elements of strategy, creativity, and compliance. And that combination often leads to challenges. If they include too many steps in the creative process, their best stories may get caught in the gridlock of approvals and never get published. Conversely, if too few people are involved, sloppy work that violates legal constraints and goes against brand guidelines can reach the public.

For us, the right editorial mix looks something like baking the perfect cake. (To the baking-averse, stick with me.) Before you step into the kitchen, the right ingredients are key. And without a recipe to follow, it will not only be difficult for you to begin, but it will also be nearly impossible for you to replicate your success when you do get it right. To run a full-fledged baking operation, you need the right system and team in place to regularly produce goods people want to buy again and again.

To illustrate how we work with brands to create content that drives engagement and leads, take a look at the infographic below. It goes over the eight steps that make up a good editorial process, all the way from implementing a strategy to distributing a story.

The post Infographic: What It Takes to Create a Piece of Content appeared first on Contently.

(There—I said it. I’m not ashamed.)

On a service level, I feel pretty much exactly the same about Spotify and Apple Music. But Apple Music has Taylor, and she’s pretty much the only thing that got me through a very hungover roundtrip drive from New York to Maryland for a wedding two weekends ago. So, in my mind, Apple Music wins. And that got me thinking about what makes us value media most.

We can talk all day about advanced metrics, but there’s a pretty simple way to know if someone truly values your content: They pay for it. For instance, this is the media I value enough to pay for, and my reasons for doing so:

Very basic cable ($27/month): Exclusively for the NFL on Sundays during the fall; I keep it year-round because I’d rather waste $162 than deal with Time Warner Cable twice.

Apple Music (will be $9.99/month): Taylor Swift (and other artists). But mostly T-Swift.

Netflix ($9/month): Countless shows I can’t get on demand anywhere else.

[Redacted] ($99.99): An amazing site that streams every single NBA game in HD but isn’t exactly legal.

And then there are a few other media subscriptions I have access to but don’t personally pay for because, you know, parents. But I would pay for them if forced to:

HBO GO: Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, Veep.

Watch ESPN: Monday Night Football. Various soccer games.

The New York Times: Incredible media coverage.

The New Yorker: The slim chance that David Sedaris publishes anything there.

After running through this checklist of content that I pay for (or would pay for), I came to an obvious conclusion: All of these companies are offering something that I can’t get anywhere else. Maybe it’s a single pop artist I love. Maybe it’s an addictive original series, or a sport that I’m absolutely addicted to (GO GIANTS! GO KNICKS! Praise #Kristaps!). Or maybe it’s a few writers—or even just one writer—who kicks total ass.

We’ve reached a point in the digital age where everyone is forced to regurgitate the same viral stories in hopes of juicing traffic numbers enough to stay in business. Ultimately, though, that doesn’t get you the thing you really want as a media company: loyal readers. Relentless advocates. People who will actually pay for your content, since giving away content for free is quickly proving to be a losing game.

If you want that, you need to offer something that your audience absolutely can’t live without.

Which brings me to branded content. While brands don’t have to worry about getting people to pay for their content, their goal should be to create something that people fall in love with so much that they would pay for it.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be premium content like Game of Thrones. There are a number of smaller sites that could easily shake me down for cash. The Awl may only get a hair over a million readers each month, but I’d absolutely pay for access to John Herrman’s thoughtful media analysis. Grantland has a fraction of ESPN’s audience (around 20 million a month), but I’d probably pay $100 a month if they threatened to take away my access to Zach Lowe and Bill Barnwell’s whip-smart columns. I imagine a lot of their other readers appreciate this good work done by intelligent people in the same way.

If brands truly want to win at the publishing game, they shouldn’t look at traffic factories like Upworthy and Business Insider and ViralNova as models to emulate; instead, they should focus on creating at least one thing on a consistent basis that people just can’t do without. Maybe it’s an amazing column written by an amazing columnist, or maybe it’s an addictive web series. Or, hell, maybe it’s just a comic strip that knocks you on your ass laughing.

Whatever it is, brands need to find it—their very own T-Swift.

The post Why Every Content Creator Needs a Taylor Swift appeared first on Contently.

Of those surveyed—270 marketing professionals across the globe whose inbound tactics are mostly B2B-focused—almost 60 percent identified content creation as their most effective strategy, while 54 percent said it is the most difficult tactic to execute.

Additionally, 41 percent of respondents said that their top challenge is “lack of content creation,” right behind “lack of an effective strategy” (46 percent).

So, what are these marketers trying to accomplish with their inbound efforts? According to the report, their biggest goals for the upcoming year are to increase conversion rates (49 percent) and improve the quality of their leads (48 percent).

In order to accomplish those goals, B2B marketers will need solid content marketing strategies in order to most effectively target and engage the right people, and then nurture them through the always-on sales funnel. After all, only the highest-quality content tends to cut through the noise and reach those high-quality leads.

And indeed, major B2B brands have already had major success with imaginative storytelling and multimedia campaigns, as outlined in our e-book, “State of B2B Content Marketing: 8 Trends and Tactics Transforming the Industry.” Content creation may be difficult to execute, but when done right, it can be marketers’ saving grace. So yield the weapon and rise to the challenge.

The post Study: Content Is B2B Marketers’ Biggest Weapon, Challenge appeared first on Contently.

And judging by a few recent unveilings from the company, its priorities may soon be just as much about creators as they are about consumers.

On June 7 Amazon made a bold entry into shaking up the filmmaking world with Amazon Storyteller, which catapults aspiring movie directors through the hoops that often bog down the production process. From uploaded scripts, Amazon Storyteller identifies the scenes, locations and characters from scene descriptions, and “casts” them from a library of thousands of characters, props and backgrounds.

This might come across as a one-off product that appeared through some kind of company “labs” division or incubator, but consider that Storyteller is only the newest member of the Amazon Studios family. This division of Amazon launched in 2010 as a gateway for independent filmmakers to get their work noticed and perhaps even produced. Since 2010 more than 14,000 movie scripts and 4,000 series pilot scripts have been submitted to Amazon Studios. There are currently 25 movies on the development slate and in the processes of being tested with audiences.

Amazon’s interest in the world of movie production is strengthened by its efforts in the distribution space. LoveFilm, which some have called the Netflix of Europe, was recently welcomed to the Amazon family. The streaming subscription service announced a major Disney content deal this week that will make it possible for users to stream popular flicks like Wall-E and The Dead Poets Society.

With all its big movie talk Amazon may seem to be shifting its focus away from the print world, but in fact, Amazon very much has digital publishing on the mind, too. Amazon Publisher has been streamlining the self publishing since spring 2012.   Besides promising writers royalties of up to 70 percent on e-book sales and letting them become published authors for a fraction of the cost and logistical hurdles, Publisher also provides features for print and audio publication. And Amazon Publisher hit a major milestone this week when “The Hangman’s Daughter” became the first Publisher title to reach one million copies sold .

Tech academic Clay Shirky, author of Cognitive Surplus: How Technology Makes Consumers Into Collaborators, has said, “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”

Likewise, enabling amateur filmmakers and writers to circulate through mainstream media is nothing new; just ask YouTube. Amazon isn’t reinventing the technological wheel, here but their focus on the self-published is significant. Amazon is flinging us into an era of self-everything; self-published, self-created, self-edited. While it’s unlikely that self-operated surgeries and self-built cars are next on Amazon’s agenda, it does speak volumes about how Amazon sees a world in which the line between consumer and creator is increasingly blurred.

The post Amazon’s Siren Song to Content Creators is Getting Louder appeared first on Contently.

Instead of posting another blog entry, the company suggests looking at and gathering information from LinkedIn discussions, telling the day in the life stories of employees, and live tweeting from industry events.

Content marketers should also survey their customers and use the findings in an educational blog post. The infographic states, “This is perfect evergreen content — plus, it shows you care about your customers’ needs and that you have a grip on where your industry is at.”

How-to videos, along with sketches that show the history of a business’ industry, may be a good fit for company content. Company data can be shared via an infographic, or marketers can hold Twitter debates that use hashtags relevant to the brand.

A culture of innovation and idea sharing among employees will help content marketing efforts, According to Reputation Capital, a marketing agency based in Baton Rouge. Companies need to train their staff on exactly what content marketing is, and employees should be allowed to “talk about their interests and give their own opinions. This will add an element of satisfaction to the task, encourage creativity and may even create new business opportunities.”

The post How to Think Beyond Blogs [INFOGRAPHIC] appeared first on Contently.

Spotify and Samsung Working Together

While some devices offer customers the chance to stream Pandora onto their televisions, a similar service is now being offered through Spotify.

Spotify has struck a deal with Samsung that will “allow direct streaming of music from Samsung television sets,” writes Sven Grundberg of the Wall Street Journal. “The deal will give Samsung a new way to promote its televisions; Spotify, meanwhile, hopes the arrangement offers a new incentive for consumers to pay for its subscription service rather than use its advertising-backed, free-of-charge offering.”

Mobile Ad Revenue Growing

A study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau has found that digital advertising revenue is increasing on mobile devices, The New York Times reports. Revenue increased 95 percent in the first half of this year, up to $1.2 billion. For the whole year of 2011, that number was $1.6 billion.

Tanzina Vega writes, “Advertising categories with the most significant growth rates included pharmaceuticals and health care, which increased 81 percent to $1.1 billion; automotive, which increased 29 percent to $2.2 billion; financial services, which increased 16 percent to $2.2 billion; and entertainment, which increased 31 percent to $729 million.”

Social Media Addiction

According to this infographic on Mashable, there are a few types of social media addicts: the person constantly liking Facebook posts, the person who always references his or her blog, the vowel hater (or htr) on Twitter, or the constant checker.

Which one are you?

A Crash Course in Content Creation

Check out the Content Marketing Institute’s latest piece on making content, and how businesses can catch up in the content marketing game.

Some of the steps are to assemble informed internal teams, promote efficiency across the organization, and develop strategic selling skills.

If You Publish It, Will They Read?

CopyBlogger’s Jonathan Morrow makes the point that just because a brand starts publishing content online, that doesn’t mean an audience will automatically sprout up.

He says that content must be something that the reader can get lost in and use as an escape. It should also be focused on the reader, and by understanding of his or her obsessions.

Just like any good pieces of writing, the reader should be able to relate, and the content marketer needs to prove that they understand their readers completely.

Roku Looking for Content

Roku, a device that streams channels from the Internet, is looking for content, according to ClickZ.

Writer Jack Aaronson asks: Why wouldn’t companies submit content to Roku instead of to YouTube? It looks like the television of the future is going to be devices like Apple TV, Google TV, and now Roku.

Email the No. 1 App for Mobile Devices

ClickZ also reported that for the second year in a row, Pew Research and Journalism.org found that email is the “number one app used on both smartphones and tablets.”

According to Pew, “65 percent of tablet users access email weekly on their tablet, with 44 percent checking in daily. In the case of smartphones, a whopping 80 percent of smartphone users check their email weekly, with 61 percent reporting daily email use.”

Just behind that is news. On the tablet, more and more people are reading the news.

The post Spotify Joins with Samsung, Mobile Ads Zoom, Social Media Addiction appeared first on Contently.

Inspiration for content can be hard to come by. Cue social media, which is a place where marketers can turn to when they’re struck by writer’s — or, more fittingly, content creator’s — block.

Here are some tips when it comes to scouting out the various social sites for the next big content idea.

Check Out Popular and Trending Conversations

On Twitter, marketers can find ideas under the trending topics. They can post about these subjects and then latch onto the trends by promoting content using the trending topic keywords on their own accounts.

When it comes to Facebook, marketers can tap into the dialogue by liking pages that are similar to their own company, looking at these pages’ posts in their newsfeed, and then sharing the posts with their own commentary, says Shirin Shahin of Constant Contact Blogs.

She notes that the same can be done on LinkedIn. For all the B2B marketers out there: “You may see someone there you want to connect with and interview, find an interesting article you want to link to, and/or get ideas from questions people are asking.”

Look at Comments

Marketers should constantly be monitoring the comments section on their companies’ various social media platforms.

They are full of rich information and can help companies find out what the customers value.

For example, if customers are complaining, marketers can write blog posts about how the companies are solving certain issues. Marketers can also figure out which content is the most engaging by seeing what gets the most comments when it’s posted.

Feel Out the Customers’ Interests

Along with the comments sections on social media sites, marketers should look up what else their customers are interested in.

“Determine what your customers discuss aside from your company,” writes Steve Floyd of AXZM. “This will provide insight into how you can improve the company’s product or service. It will also provide insight into how to tailor your company’s sales and marketing strategy.”

This can be done by looking at the individual profiles of customers on Facebook to see what else they “like,” their Twitter accounts to see who they follow, and their YouTube accounts to check out who they’ve subscribed to.

The golden rule is that content should not be solely focused on the company, or else it looks too much like an advertisement. By zoning in on the customers’ other interests, and then creating content based on that, the content will be engaging to the demographic.

Run Contests

Sometimes marketers come up empty for their own content, even with the help of social media. In that case, curate. One great way to do this is by running a contest, which can be highly engaging and provide companies with a treasure trove of information.

If a company runs a photo contest and receives submissions, it can then showcase the images on the social media sites, through email lists, or on their blogs. The same thing goes for a writing or design contest.

Running contests will promote the creation of content on two fronts: It’ll get customers submitting content, and the companies can give commentary on and run a series of blog posts about the contest.

According to Jib, an advertising, branding, and design firm, contests “engage consumers with your brand in a personal, agreeable and — if you get it right — meaningful way, while delivering valuable info, preferences and feedback you can put into play to enhance your business offering.”

Image courtesy of kexino, sofiabudapest/flickr

The post Social Media Can Generate Strong Story Ideas appeared first on Contently.

This infographic by CopyPress shows these four aspects of online content creation.

In the social space, there are more than 800 million users on Facebook, 225 million on Twitter, and 39 million on Tumblr. YouTube, which resides in the video space online, receives over 800 million unique visitors per months. Seventy-two hours of video are uploaded every minute, and in 2011, the site saw one trillion views. It dominates over Vimeo, which has 65 million unique monthly visits.

Images are highly important to the users on Facebook as proven by the infographic. Three thousand photos are uploaded per second to the site. On Instagram, 60 photos are uploaded per second, and 52 per second are put on Flickr.

In terms of copy content, there are a whopping 7.38 billion pages on the internet. One hundred and twenty three million Americans are reading newspapers online, and on any given day, there are 500,000 new blog posts popping up on WordPress.

With these numbers, it’s apparent that content marketers are facing a lot of competition to capture a user’s attention.

On YouTube, it can be done by creating a brand page that is worth visiting and stands out. Facebook pages must also generate content that is shareable, and, of course, include visuals. Websites should contain interesting content be easy to view on mobile devices, and blogs should always include visuals (preferably from the popular sites such as Instagram or Flickr).

Jon Gelberg of Inc. says marketers need to have confidence and figure out what they have to do to reel in their target audience.

“If you can’t convince yourself why customers or clients should be coming to you instead of your competitors, then how are you going to convince your target audience?” he says. “However you feel about it, there is little or no place for humility on the Web. In a world where your potential customers are looking for the very best and all of your competitors are just a click away, you’ve got to make yourself heard.”

The post How Content is Written, Shared, Captured on Video, and Photographed [Infographic] appeared first on Contently.

Creativity easily crossed mediums — in fact, exploring a new skill can bring inspiration back to a person’s primary work.

Some idioms such as “be well read” can falsely synonymize information with writing, so we use the term “content” to better describe the wider world of blogging, vlogging, curating and infographics — all powerful vehicles for information.

In fact, with the rise of smaller screens on tablets and mobile phones, we can expect the trend towards visual content to only increase. A content strategist might not need to be an expert at every format, but knowing the basics is a great way to stay on top of the field.

Following are some quality and affordable online learning experiences you’ll want to take advantage of:

Codecademy

Codecademy takes a fun approach to learning code that feels like a game, complete with badges for achievements. The startup garnered a lot of attention early this year with Code Year — a promotion that got much buzz on social media from people wanting to learn code, and earned over 100,000 new users in 48 hours (and 450,000 to date).

Not having a real project to work on can leave you bored, notes Leo Widrich, the (previously) non-technical startup founder of Buffer. Widrich’s incentives to learn code include getting in the habit of learning new things every day, and better understanding the people he works with.

He describes on his blog how he’s used Codecademy to build Quotespire. “The more I learn, the more fun it gets.”

Robert Hernandez, a USC journalism professor who is involved in too many journalism leadership roles to list, decided Codecademy was a perfect fit for his fascination with connecting a group through Google+ Hangouts.

His initial plan of recruiting nine people quickly turned into over 100 people in 12 separate groups that meet up on Hangouts at scheduled times throughout the week (many of whom work in the news industry and had struggled to learn code on their own).

Most participants have not met in real life but are comfortable asking questions and offering help when someone gets stuck. The peer pressure is what makes it work, Hernandez explains.

“Having that dedicated time slot with more than three people is the recipe for success,” Hernandez says. “You’ve got to have an ounce of guilt for not showing up.”

Codecademy offers lessons for Javascript (including jQuery), HTML and CSS, and is currently a free service.

Treehouse

Treehouse gets into more meaty programmming with responsive web design, Ruby basics (for a back end, or database code) and iOS development (X-code and Objective C).

The video tutorials are available for a membership of $25/mo., but Treehouse recognizes a learner’s need to work on real-life projects and built projects for users to tackle on their Gold membership, which is $49/mo.

New York Video School

New York Video School offers online courses as well as live lectures to people who either want to create compelling videos for their own website or sell their video-making skills to others — in fact, How To Start Your Own Production Company is the most popular course.

“The arrival of smart phones and iPads means that the world is now awash in screens … and those screens call for video,” says founder Michael Rosenblum, adding that he considers video to be the career choice for the next decade if not beyond (the title of his soon-to-be released book, iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting Edge Video, suggests the same).

NYVS classes include storytelling, video shooting and editing, and unlimited access to courses is $9.95/mo.

Lynda

Any designer will be the first to say that great design comes from lots of hands-on experience. But, experience must start with learning the basic tool, Photoshop, and Lynda is the authority on self-education, with an extensive library of video lessons for a low monthly fee ($25).

For a total newbie, it’s best to start with photo editing and infographics, and eventually work up the more complex, such as illustrations. Lynda also offers web design, developer and video courses.

The downside to learning a new skill online is the lack of follow-up. While incentives such as Codecademy’s badges can help, there’s nothing like putting together a group to learn together and keep each other accountable. As Widrich mentioned, putting what you’ve learned on display on a blog or somewhere else online can bring the encouragement that will help you keep going.

In addition to getting feedback, Rosenblum also recommends that learners just keep producing.

He says of NYVS, “As long as you keep making [videos] and uploading them, we’ll be happy to keep critiquing. The best way for someone learning online to get good is to keep making videos.”

Tree image courtesy of Lightspring/shutterstock

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In a March 2012 poll of more than 400 US marketers and agencies that worked with business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies, Curata, a content curation services provider, found that 95% had curated content in some way over the past six months by sharing a link, blog post or other content type with a potential customer.

75% of the respondents said they understood the value of content curation but didn’t have the time to dedicate to it. A majority spend their time curating by manually searching for content on third party sites.

A possible correlation could be made between marketers looking for time saving solutions and the rise of curation services such as Percolate. Content creation also remained a challenge, with 73% now saying they felt this, versus 74% last year.

With content curation the bigger challenge, it appears that many marketers have chosen to curate since it seems like the easiest option. Social media also emerged as being the content distribution channel of choice.

The post Content Use Grows But the Challenge of Finding It Remains High appeared first on Contently.

If you follow our Twitter and/or Tumblr, you know that we like to keep you updated on what’s going on in the world of Content Creation outside of The Content Strategist. Here’s a wrap-up of  things we’ve noticed over the past week.

Publications With Big Twitter Followings Tweet Less. Should You Take A Card From Their Playbook?  – Did you know that in 2011, news organizations with rapidly growing Twitter followings actually sent less tweets than their competitors? We ask – how do we learn from this, and apply their strategies for our own use?

More Cool Ways to Explore Instagram for Your Brand – If you read our latest on the Content Strategist on How Brands Use Instagram, you’ll know how some companies use the photo-sharing app in incredibly creative ways. Here, we layed out some tools to improve your own use.

…But What About SEO? –  If you’re like us, its easy to get so focused on social media that we don’t read up on the latest buzz for the original internet marketer’s metric – SEO!

This Week’s Toolbox: Use Quora, Instagram, and YouTube To Maximize Content Marketing – Every week we scour the webosphere for some killer how to’s.

TNW: Ten Sites Who Totally Get The Principles of Experience Design – They ran a great list of how to really “get” UX design that is super useful for anyone putting content out on the web. Some tips include stay out of people’s way, make a good first impression, and give your users context!

Yay! Have a Great Week!

Related articles

• 4 Brands That Use Instagram For Killer Social Media Marketing (contently.com)
• 15 Must-Have Tools For Better Blogging (contently.com)
• Awesome Content About Content, Week of 11/7/11 (contently.com)

The post Awesome Content About Content, Week of 11/14 appeared first on Contently.

If you follow our Twitter and/or Tumblr, you know that we like to keep you updated on what’s going on in the world of Content Creation outside of The Content Strategist. Here’s a wrap-up of  things we’ve noticed over the past week.

Amping Your Blog’s Visuals, Step By Step – Page views were 94 percent higher for pages with visual content than pages that contained only text. We show you some of our favorite image search tools and diy approaches.

TV Internet Blends: They’re Merging, But It’s Definitely A Wild West – Are we ready for full-on video internet ads? We lay out the latest in hybrid tv-internet newsmakers, and what this may mean over the next couple of years.

How The NBA, The NFL, and The MLB Use Content To Gain Fans – Sports are one of America’s favorite forms of entertainment, so it’s no surprise that they are pretty innovative with internet strategy. We lay out who’s killing it, and what to learn from them.

The Key To Reaching Tablet Users (And Anyone, Really…) is Flexibility – recent studies have shown that tablet users consume a greater variety and volume of content than users of traditional channels. So what does this mean for content creators? Our analysis: your best bet is staying flexible.

Well Known Companies That Innovate On The Web Like Startups… – Some shake-up innovation from giants like Coca Cola and Nordstroms, and on-the-rise companies like One Kings Lane.

One Tool, One List, And One Infographic That Actually Stuck With Us This Week – Our “anti-wrap up” wrap up, featuring three useful content links that we actually kept using throughout the week.

Related articles

• How To Develop A Community Management Plan (contently.com)
• Want To Gain Loyal Readers? Stop Writing About Yourself! (contently.com)
• 5 Fashion Companies That Are Crushing It With Content (contently.com)

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